Tag Archives: RecoverPoint

EMC VSI RecoverPoint/SRM Integration

SRM, vSphere, , , , ,

I’ve recently set a customer up with new VNX storage arrays, RecoverPoint , and it’s all to be integrated with VMware Site Recovery Manager.  Previously, the customer used SRM in conjunction with MirrorView/A.  Why RecoverPoint?

The really cool thing about RecoverPoint is you can easily rollback to specific points in time, as they like to call it DVR functionality for disaster recovery.  MirrorView/A only allows you to rollback to a specific snapshots at specific points in time.

EMC also provides their VSI for VMware environments.  This integrates with many of their storage products, including VNX, RecoverPoint, and it provides the DVR selection ability within SRM if you integrate it as well!

Setup is pretty straight forward:

  1. Deploy the OVA for the VSI in each site.
  2. Login to the VSI’s web portal by hitting https://<ip>:8443/vsi_vum with user name admin and password ChangeMe.  Change the password as prompted.
  3. Install the VSI’s plugin with vCenter by going to VSI Setup and provide the required info.  If you don’t get “The Operation is successful.”, do it again unless you’re provided an error to troubleshoot.  For me, that happened on one of the two vCenter servers I was deploying this on.  Also, be patient, as this can take quite sometime.  For me, the plugin took about 10-15 minutes to complete the installation.
  4. Login to the vCenter Web Client, and go to vCenter Inventory Lists. At the end, you should see an EMC VSI section. emcvsisection
  5. Click on Storage Integration Service.  Under Actions, click Register Solutions Integration Service, and enter the VSI’s info for that vCenter.  Click Test to ensure there’s connectivity to the VSI, and click OK.
  6. Under Storage Systems, add the storage array for that site.  Again, click Test to ensure there’s connectivity to the storage array, and click OK.  VSI supports VMAX, VNX, VNXe, ViPR, and XtremIO, so this isn’t just limited to the VNX on this project.
  7. Under Data Protection Systems, add the RecoverPoint cluster info for that site using the RPA cluster IP address, and be sure to select RecoverPoint as the Protection System Type.  rpprotectionsystemtypeClick Test to ensure communication will work.  If successful, OK will no longer be grayed out.  Click OK.
  8. Repeat step 7, but select SRM this time for the Data Proection System type.  Here’s where I ran into a gotcha.  The FQDN/IP address and port fields were grayed out.  I went ahead and clicked to Test, and got an error: “Could not communicate with the data protection system SRM at <IP of vCenter server>. Details: Cannot reach the target SRM server at <IP of vCenter server>:1” vsisrmregerrorGoogle didn’t yield any results for a solution, so I began troubleshooting.  Thankfully, I knew my ports, and decided to click the check box for the FQDN or IP/Port line, and entered in the FQDN of the SRM server and the port.  Be aware that SRM 6.X uses 9086.  I provided that, clicked Test, got my green “OK to go” text, and clicked OK.

Note that this needs to be done for each vCenter/RPA cluster/storage array/SRM server in the environment.  Note also only one VSI instance can be registered per vCenter server, so you’ll need to deploy one VSI per vCenter.

After setting up each site, go to a VM, click it, go to Manage, view the snapshots for its Consistency Group, click the one you want and apply, and launch your Failover or Test action from SRM.

vsiselectsnapshot

And there you have it!

Using PowerShell when there isn’t PowerShell support

Automation,

I know many of us work on lots of different technologies, many of which don’t have native PowerShell cmdlets, and that kind of thing.  Sometimes it’s DOS, sometimes, it’s Telnet/SSHing into a command line where you got to run individual command strings to fix a bunch of individual objects.  I know many of you guys end up hacking stuff together using Excel or other tools to basically to assemble a repeated command to fix multiple objects, or create rules or whatever, like…

First part of command object1 second part of command

First part of command object2 second part of command

And you got a list of all your objects you got to do this on.  This can be painful.

Let me give you an example…

Working on an issue with an old version of EMC RecoverPoint, which has no PowerShell integration.

Basically, the customer masked some LUNs to VMAX front end ports that aren’t hooked up, and RecoverPoint is barking because it can’t access those ports.  So the customer has to unmap the front end ports and unmask.  I know for many of you guys, it’s this garbledy gook of tech you don’t work with.  In the end, the specific technology doesn’t matter.

RecoverPoint reports all the volumes that are the problem, like this:

Devices: 2B3B,277F,83D8,2B34,2250,21DD,2774,102A,21E2,281E,102B,281F,83D5,83E1,12B7,83CB,83DC,83DF,2775,83DB,24BB,83CE,818D,83D9,2784,2776,83CD,83DA,12CF,281D,83E3,0FB4,83D0,2B50,83CC,0FA3,8037,0FB3,83D1,2772,8196,83D4,83CF,83E2,83D3,83D7,2773,277E,12CC,12C9,8038,83DE,8036,1518,83D6,83D2,83DD,83E0

The first thing I need is an array of these I can pump into a loop.

This is stupid simple for PowerShell.  Each device is separated by a comma, so I can just use comma as the split character.

(Cut off the long string of devices, you get the idea)

$devicelist = “2B3B,277F,83D8,2B34,2250,21DD”

$devices = $devicelist.split(‘,’)

Now, if you type $devices, you get:

2B3B

277F

83D8

2B34

2250

21DD

Now we have our simple array.

Also, another helpful thing to know is if you have a sequence of numbers, you can use another PowerShell trick.  Say I need an array of objects that’s object1-10.  Also easy:

$objects = 1..10 | foreach-object {“object” + $_}

Type $objects and you get:

object1

object2

object3

object4

object5

object6

object7

object8

object9

object10

Yes, you can do this for IPs.  Say I want an array of all IPs in 192.168.0.0/24, so I can ping them or whatever.

$ips = 1..254 | foreach-object {‘192.168.1.’ + $_}

Maybe port ranges with “TCP” in front for firewall rule statements.

$tcpports = 3000..4000 | foreach-object {“TCP” + $_}

Now, I need to have command string stuff added in front and behind this.  Again, this doesn’t matter what tech you’re working on, just put your garbledy gook that I wouldn’t understand in.  $_ is the instance in the array

$commands = $devices | foreach-object {‘symconfigure -sid 1234 -cmd “unmap dev ‘ + $_ + ‘ from dir ALL:ALL;” commit’}

If I type $commands, I get:

symconfigure -sid 1234 -cmd “unmap dev 2B3B from dir ALL:ALL;” commit

symconfigure -sid 1234 -cmd “unmap dev 277F from dir ALL:ALL;” commit

symconfigure -sid 1234 -cmd “unmap dev 83D8 from dir ALL:ALL;” commit

symconfigure -sid 1234 -cmd “unmap dev 2B34 from dir ALL:ALL;” commit

symconfigure -sid 1234 -cmd “unmap dev 2250 from dir ALL:ALL;” commit

symconfigure -sid 1234 -cmd “unmap dev 21DD from dir ALL:ALL;” commit

BAM!  We got our commands, and we’re rolling.  If I want to save the commands as a text file…

$commands | out-file c:\dir\ourcoolscript.txt

Now I can copy/paste into putty/telnet session, or upload the script file and launch it if that’s possible, whatever I want to do.

WAY faster IMO than using other tools or duct taping a solution using Excel or other weird methods, and far more flexible.

So even if your technologies don’t have PowerShell, you can still use PowerShell!